History (11 page)

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A N Y O N E B O R N O F P A R E N T S O F I T A L I A N N A T I O N A L I T Y,
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F 1 O C T O B E R 1 9 3 8 - X V I , H E W A S O F A R E L I G I O N O T H E R T H A N T H E J E W I S H .

A R T I C L E 9 · M E M B E R S H I P I N T H E J E W I S H R A C E M U S T B E R E P O R T E D A N D R E C O R D E D I N T H E L E G A L S T A T U S R E G I S T R I E S A N D T H E C E N S U S.

A R T I C L E 1 9 . I N A P P L I C A T I O N O F A R T I C L E 9 , A L L T H O S E T O W H O M A R T I C L E 8 A P P L I E S M U S T R E P O R T T H E I R S T A T U S T O T H E R E G I S T R Y I N T H E C I T Y O R T O W N O F T H E I R L E G A L R E S I D E N C E . . . . .

So read the Italian racial law, proclaimed in the autumn of
1938.
With it, moreover, all citizens said to be "of Jewish race" were excluded from the management of businesses, properties, possessions, were forbidden to at tend schools of any kind, and were banned from all professions and em ployment in general, beginning, obviously, with the teaching profession.

These decrees were dated 17 November 1938. A few days before, throughout the Reich, after years of discrimination and persecution, the plan for the genocide of the Jews had been initiated. Against them, all the Germans had been given free rein to destroy and murder. In the course of several nights, many Jews were slaughtered, thousands carried off to t
h
e

Lagers, their houses, stores, synagogues, burn and devastated.

Nora, with her death, had eluded by a few months the Italian racial decrees, which now stigm her irremediably as a Jew. However, her

46 H I S T O R Y
. . . . . .
1 9 · ·

foresight, which thirty-fi years earlier had led her to have Iduzza baptized a Catholic, now saved the latter from losing her post as schoolteacher and from the other punitive provisions, according to paragraph
D)
of
Art 8.
On this score,
Art 19
decreed the obligatory steps to be taken by those concerned. And so it was that Iduzza as ti and stunned as if she were on trial at the Palace of Justice, presented herself at the City Offi in Rome.

She had duly provided herself with all the required documents : both those on her Jewish matern side and those on her Ary patern side, including her baptismal certificate, as well as Giuseppe's, and those of her Calabrian grandparents (also in their graves now) . Not a thing was lack ing. And since she was ashamed even to open her mouth, along with this dossier, she also handed the clerk a page from a notebook where, in her own hand, she had wri out her personal data. But a kind of repug nance, tantamount to a fi little tri had made her omit any accent on her mother's maiden name.

"Almagia
or ALMAGIA?" the clerk inquired, examining her with an inquisitori eye, authoritative and threatening.

She fl worse than a pupil caught copying an answer. "Almagia," she murmured hastily, "my mother was Jewish!"

The clerk sought no further information. And so, for the moment, the matter was settled.

In any ca Authority, in its secret coff from that day on retained the knowledge that Ida Mancuso, nee Ramundo, schoolteacher, was a halfbreed, though for every else, still, she was an ordinary Aryan . . . In Italy, an
A ryan!
After a certain time, however, through private sources of hers, Ida learn that the laws were different in the Reich . . . And she began to suspect that any day a possible amendment of the national de crees might occur, involving not only her alone, but perhaps also her son Nino! Like her husband Alfi Ninnuzzu, too, had always been unaware, and could never have dreamed, that there were Jews among his own rela ti He grew up carefree, heedless of every and a fanatical admirer of the Blackshirts.

Meanwhile, the Mussolini-Hitler bond be tighter and tighter until, in the following spring of 1939, the two formed a military alliance with their
Pact of Steel.
And without further ado, as Benito had colonized the Ethiopians, Adolf set forth to colonize the people of Europe, under the empire of the supreme German race, as he had promised. Still, at the outburst of the World War that shortly followed, the Italian partner, in spite of the pact, preferred to remain to one side, insecure, temporizing. And only the sensational winnings of his partner (who in the course of one moon, having devoured all Europe, was already at his goal, Paris ) and a

47

wish to guarantee his own share of glory made him enter the war at Adolf's side. It was the month of June 1940; and Ninnuzzu, then fourteen, wel comed the news with pleasure, though irked at the delay. In fact, he had become fed up waiting for his Duce to decide on this new, grand action.

Of all the rush of world events, Iduzza followed nothing, except the announcements of resounding Hitlerian victories which reechoed in the house through Nino's voice.

In the days of Italy's entry into the war, she happened to hear various opinions of the matter. Called one aftern by the Principal of the High School, because of certain unjustifi absences of her son Nino, she found the offi in a state of radiant euphoria at the Duce's prompt decision. "We are," the personage declared to her with great pomp, "for peace with victory, at the least possible cost! And today, when the Blitzkrieg of the Axis is about to achieve its goal of peace, we hail the foresight of our Leader, who has won for our Fatherland the fruits of success with the greatest economy. In a single move, saving even the price of tires, here we are at the fi alongside the winner!!" Tbis authoritative speech impressed Ida, who didn't reply.

As far as she could understand, her fellow teachers at the elementary school, whose talk she overheard in the corridors, thought, more or less, like the Principal of the High School. Only an elderly charw (called Barbetta-the Beard-by the children because of a senile wisp that grew on her chin ) had been caught by Ida as, to ward off evil, she was touch ing all the doors and murmuring, as she went along, that this action against the French was a "stab in the back" and that certain
lucky
actions sooner or later always bring bad luck.

On the other hand, that same morn at her appearance in the school, the doorkeeper, marching through the vestibule like a conqueror, had greeted her with this sentence: "Signora Mancuso, when do we enter Paris?" But then, as she was going home later, she heard the baker's apprentice, in the door of the tavern, frowning, confi to the proprietor: "If you ask me, the Rome-Berlin Axis is all wrong. You see what happens? Those Berliners pull some shitty trick, and we, here, from Rome, go and lend them a hand!!" Among such divergent opinions, poor Iduzza didn't dare formulate any view on her own.

To the many mysteries of Authority which frightened her there had now been added the word
Ary
which she had never known before. Actually, in this case, that word had no logical meaning; and the Author iti could have replaced it, at will, and with the same public efficacy, with
Pachyderms
or
Ruminants,
or any word whatsoever. But to Iduzza mind, it became all the more authoritative because it was arcane.

48 H I S T O R Y
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.
. . .
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Not even from her mother had she ever heard this denomination "Aryans"; in fact the denomination of
Jews
itself for little lduzza in the house down in Cosenza had remained an object of great mystery. Except by Nora in her secret councils, it was never uttered in vain in the Ra mundo home! I have learned that once, in one of his great anarchist perorations, Giuseppe happened to proclaim, in a thundering voice: "The day will come when masters and proletarians, black and white, male and female,
Jews
and Christians, will be all equal, in the sole honor of being part of humanity!!" But at that shouted word
Jews,
Nora let out a cry of fright and blanched as if seized by a serious illness; whereupon Giuseppe, all repentant, came to her and repeated, this time in a very low voice : ". . . I said,
Jews and Christians
. . ." As if by whispering the word very softly, after having shouted it very loud, he were repairing the disaster!

In any case, now, Ida learned that the Jews were diff not only because they were Jews, but also because they were
non-Aryans.
And who were the
Aryans?
To Iduzza this term used by the Authorities suggested something ancient and lofty, on the order of
Baron
or
Count.
And in her concept the Jews were opposed to the
Aryans
much as the plebeians to the patricians (she had studied history! ). However, obviously, the non-Aryans, for the Authorities, were the most plebeian of the plebeians! For example, the baker's apprentice, plebeian by class, compared to a Jew was as good as a patrician, beca he was Aryan! And if, in the social order, the plebeians were already like scabies, the plebeians of the plebeians must have been leprosy!

It was as if Nora's obsessions, swarming in disorder after her death, had returned to nest inside her daughter. After reporting to the registry, Ida had resumed her former life. She lived just like an Aryan among other Ary no one seemed to doubt her total Aryan-ness, and on the rare occasions when she had to show her documents ( for example, at the Bur sar's offi ), though her heart was pounding in her · breast, her mother's maiden name went completely unnoticed. Her racial secret seemed buried, once and for all, in the fi of the Registry; but she, knowing it lay recorded in those mysterious tombs, was still afraid some news of it might fi to the outside, branding her-but especially Nino!-wi the mark of the outcast and the impure. Moreover, particularly at school, where she, a clandestine half-Jew, enjoyed the ri and functions due
Ary
she felt guilty, a usurper, a counterfeiter.

Also on the rounds of her daily shopping, she had the feeling she was begging, like an orphaned stray puppy, in other people's territory. Then one day, she who, before the racial laws, had never encountered another Jew except Nora, began to follow an incongruous trail of her own prefer-

4 9

ring the confi of the Roman Ghetto, the stands and shops of some little Jews who, at that time, were still allowed to continue their humble trade as before.

At fi her shyness led her to trade only with certain old people, with half-spent eyes and sealed lips. But chance gradually brought her some less taciturn acquaintances, usually some neighborhood woman, who, encouraged perhaps by Ida's Semitic eyes, would chat with her in passing. Here she derived her chief histori and political news, since with Aryans she avoided certain subjects, and for one reason or another, she also made slight use of the common sources of information. The family radio, already owned when Alfi was alive, had stopped working over a year ago, so Ninnarieddu, one fi day, had demolished it completely, taking it apart and using the pieces for various constructions of his own (nor did she have the money to buy another). And as for the newspapers, she wasn't in the habit of reading them, and in her home only sports papers appeared, or illustrated fi magazines, for Nino's exclusive consumption. Th very sight of newspapers had always aroused in her an innate alienation and aversion; and, more recently, she became alarm at a mere glimpse of the front-page headlines, so thick and black. Passing the newsstands, or on the tram, every day she would happen to glance at them, with distrust, to see if by any chance they denounced, among the Jews' many misdeeds, also her

own, with the infamous surname: ALMAGIA . . .

Not distant from her school, the Ghetto was a small, ancient quarter, segregated-until the last century-by high walls and gates that were locked in the evening, and subject in those days to fevers, because of the vapors and muck of the nearby Tiber, which did not then have embank ments. Since the old quarter had been made more hygienic and its walls tom down, its population had done nothing but multiply; and now, in those same few narrow streets and those two little squares, thousands of people contrived somehow to live. There were many hundreds of infants and youngsters, mostly with mops of curls and lively eyes; and at the beginning of the war, before the famine began, numerous cats still roamed around, resident among the ruins of the ancient Theater of Marcellus, a stone's throw away. The inhabitants, for the most part, were peddlers or rag-men, the only trades allowed the Jews in past centuries, though soon, in the course of the war, these would also be forbidden by the new Fascist laws. A few of these little merchants had, at most, a room or two on the street, to use as a shop or a storehouse. And these, more or less, were all the resources of the small village, where the racial decrees of 1938, still in force, had not been able to aff their lot much.

In certain families of the quarter, the news of those decrees had hardly been noticed, as if they were things concerning the few rich Jewish ladies

50 H I S T O R Y
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and gentlemen who lived scattered through the bourgeois residential dis tricts of the city. And as for the various other threats, which circulated darkly, the information Ida gathered about them there was incomplete and confused, like prison grapevine news. In general, among her acquaintances in the little shops, there reigned an ingenuous and trusting incredulity. If she, as an Aryan, gave some faint little hint of knowledge, those poor busy little women, for the most part, responded with an evasive heedlessness or else a reticent resignation. So much of the news was invented for propa ga And besides, in Italy, certain things could never happen. They trusted in the important friendships (or also in the Fascist merits ) of the heads of the Community or of the Rabbi; in Mussolini's benevolence towards the Jews; and even in the protection of the Pope (whereas Popes, in reality, over the centuri had been among their worst enemies ). If some one of them seemed more skeptical, they didn't want to believe him . . . But, to tell the truth, in their position, they had no other defense.